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I'm just so DONE with these audio drop outs. I have an Onkyo which gets "lost/confused" when it's DD stream is interrupted (it goes searching for 3 seconds before locking back on to DD.)I've switched over to stereo PCM. The drop outs are still there but they are in the hundreds of milliseconds and barely audible because in PCM the receiver doesn't switch when losing the stream adding 3 seconds of silence.

[...]

I keep holding out hope that eventually DirecTV will address this issue. But it has been well over a year since this problem suddenly started happening (after being fine for as long as I could remember.) [...]

Have you reported this 5.1 issue in the appropriate issues thread for the release you're on? If not, you might want to do so and give them the exact model # of your receiver.

I realize this looks like the appropriate thread to mention it, but you seem to have a "dropout recovery" issue with that specific Onkyo that's more serious than most are reporting here. As you may already know, the national release "issues" threads can be found here.

Have you reported this 5.1 issue in the appropriate issues thread for the release you're on? If not, you might want to do so and give them the exact model # of your receiver.

I realize this looks like the appropriate thread to mention it, but you seem to have a "dropout recovery" issue with that specific Onkyo that's more serious than most are reporting here. As you may already know, the national release "issues" threads can be found here.

Actually, this is the exact problem we are all talking about here, so this was the correct thread. 3 seconds is normal for Onkyo models built two years ago and probably older. It is the reason my Onkyo is now collecting dust in my closet (and I paid $750 for it when I bought it 2 and half years ago). My Pioneer 1120 takes 0.5 seconds to resync instead of 3 seconds.

Actually, this is the exact problem we are all talking about here, so this was the correct thread. 3 seconds is normal for Onkyo models built two years ago and probably older [...]

Ouch! Didn't realize 3 seconds was the "norm" for those Onkyo's. My bad for not reading back through the thread more thoroughly. Was hoping that by posting the model number Taylor might have gotten a quicker resolution.

Sunspots? I seem to remember, back in the late 70s when I was a kid and my parents had a c-band rig, that late august to about the end of september, there were periods where we'd have basically lousy signal quality.

The thing that keeps me coming back to this thread is...I never get a 771 loss of signal message. At some points late this afternoon, ESPN and especially the Big 10 Network during the divisional announcement at 6 central...pretty near unwatchable at times, video and audio. Brief 2-3 second pixelization always on the lower half of the screen and the digital audio via coaxial blinks the signal on my Sony. It'll go on for 15 or so minutes every say 15 seconds or so, then disappear...then start up again.

I record my component and optical digital outputs to my HD-PVR - its happening there also in recordings. Some channel recordings seem fine but still have blips maybe 1-2 an hour...some are horrific and I have to toss the recordings - Smithsonian and ESPN are great examples. Seems better on overnight recordings for things like VH1 Classic, HBO, HDNet Movies.

Anyone know a band/model receiver that you can FIX/LOCK on DD so it doesn't try to auto switch when the DD stream is interrupted?I may break down and cash in the change bucket despite having perfectly good Onkyo that isn't even that old.

Cheap (less than $200) Sony Soundbar - SS-MCT100, set up with optical cables. It runs DD just fine; never had an audio drop-out. I'm no expert, but from what I read, the drop-outs seem to come with HDMI setups. Maybe an optical setup would help.

Cheap (less than $200) Sony Soundbar - SS-MCT100, set up with optical cables. It runs DD just fine; never had an audio drop-out. I'm no expert, but from what I read, the drop-outs seem to come with HDMI setups. Maybe an optical setup would help.

It's not just with HDMI. I will get the audio dropouts when using optical as well.

Sunspots? I seem to remember, back in the late 70s when I was a kid and my parents had a c-band rig, that late august to about the end of september, there were periods where we'd have basically lousy signal quality.

The thing that keeps me coming back to this thread is...I never get a 771 loss of signal message. At some points late this afternoon, ESPN and especially the Big 10 Network during the divisional announcement at 6 central...pretty near unwatchable at times, video and audio. Brief 2-3 second pixelization always on the lower half of the screen and the digital audio via coaxial blinks the signal on my Sony. It'll go on for 15 or so minutes every say 15 seconds or so, then disappear...then start up again.

I record my component and optical digital outputs to my HD-PVR - its happening there also in recordings. Some channel recordings seem fine but still have blips maybe 1-2 an hour...some are horrific and I have to toss the recordings - Smithsonian and ESPN are great examples. Seems better on overnight recordings for things like VH1 Classic, HBO, HDNet Movies.

And not a single 771...

The audio problems being discussed can't be caused by either the twice per year predictable signal outages or by a specific solar storm. All either do is completely overwhelm the sat signal with their own broadband noise. In these cases, both video and audio are affected, and not just a short burst, but in the first case, about 10 to 15 minutes, and in the second case, at least several minutes.

sorry i'm new, and i've been having these audio drops since last December and i've gone thru 4 HD DVR's from Directv, along with switching my Audio Receiver to a Yamaha (new).

not sure this has been asked, but does Dish Network have these same issues as Directv?? i also have Cox Cable available, do cable companies have Audio Drops too?

just wondering if i should give up and switch...

I don't have dish, so As for cable, some of this may also be on cable, as if the source is bad there, it will be bad on cable/MPEG-2 also, "BUT" there does seem to be more of this with MPEG-4, which is the encoding that DirecTV uses.

May be jumping in a bit late on this discussion but here the drops are noticable on most of the HD channels with HGTV and especially SPEED ( actually absolutely horrible on there) being worse, yet it seems I never get any drops on the starz or showtime channels, also drops only seems to occur on the shows being broadcast in DD5.1 rather than the ones that are only in DD2.0.

The drops don't last long, maybe half second as the AVR resync's but still annoying, also when just listing to the tv (samsung LN-S4692D) via hdmi the audio will slur and distort at times, which I assume would be a dropout on the AVR.

Now for those thinking about going to Uverse due to the audio issues go take a look at the at&t utalk forums and you will see many complaining of the very same thing for shows broadcast in DD5.1, take a look at http://utalk.att.com...-5-1/td-p/57711

May be jumping in a bit late on this discussion but here the drops are noticable on most of the HD channels with HGTV and especially SPEED ( actually absolutely horrible on there) being worse, yet it seems I never get any drops on the starz or showtime channels, also drops only seems to occur on the shows being broadcast in DD5.1 rather than the ones that are only in DD2.0.

The drops don't last long, maybe half second as the AVR resync's but still annoying, also when just listing to the tv (samsung LN-S4692D) via hdmi the audio will slur and distort at times, which I assume would be a dropout on the AVR.

Now for those thinking about going to Uverse due to the audio issues go take a look at the at&t utalk forums and you will see many complaining of the very same thing for shows broadcast in DD5.1, take a look at http://utalk.att.com...-5-1/td-p/57711

About half a dozen severe (at least for my set-up) dropouts on this week's Dark Blue (11PM ET showing). They ranged from .5 to 1 second and caused my AVR to repeatedly drop DD, based on its front panel display.

Yesterday, on the LiL "CW" channel 34, which was a rebroadcast of Miami 4, I had dropouts galore. This was on my bedroom HR22, HDMI straight to the TV. This is the first time I have noticed so many, and so lengthy.

------------------------------------------------------------------------A fool finds no pleasure in understanding but delights in airing his own opinions.

Here's a list of channels I got this on, scoured the last 45 minutes or so. I went through my saved favorites, about 85 channels, and stood on each HD channel for approximately 15-30 seconds. Some channels I get the blips in maybe 2-5 seconds after tuning them in, some I have to stay there for as much as a minute before I get the pixelization/drops.

This morning, all the HBO HDs had it. I have also seen it on 256 and 337...337 had them between 630am and 10am central about every 10-15 seconds. One thing I also noticed...I watched the Hurd on 208 for about a half hour between 1130-12 central this morning, not one drop...but last night during the Gopher game, had several drops. I will also say, this week, EVERY HD channel I watched has had them at some point.

All through this, I remembered...last time I had issues, it ws May 3rd of this year...at my ground, the barrel inside had water in it. No visiable signs on the outside either. It was a rig I made, properly, just without the fancy waterproof connectors DTV uses. So, I kept thinking...it cannot be that, they put those waterproof cups on it, no way is water getting in there.

Opened that sucker up, and it had visible water inside both ends. Evidently the run of wire, the low spot in the horizontal run on both sides is the grounding block itself. Even though the area itself and the outside of the whole assembly looks factory new, inside was water - both copper leads were all grungy along with black moldy type stuff, maybe microscopic dirt.

Put new replacement coax el cheapo leads and a barrel connector on, no blips since. Gonna properly get it all fixed up with better waterproofs again plus re-ground it, but if this flimsy fix works, must be the issue.

Sorry if I got anyone riled up about this...my faith maybe in the equipment is restored...and I'll check this more careully and relocate it so it's the high points on both horizontal runs.

How I decided to look was I called tech support - she checked all my signals and found on 103s and 99s I was low to 0 on a few spot beams I should be getting better signals on, even though I was getting upper 90s on the same sat and all the 4 others. Pressed channel down and held it and the receiver ran a self check...it returned an error code (70-70-201 I believe) that, even though the 2 errors listed were for no ethernet hookup...it told her that I was low on 103s and 99s, and to check wiring.